Values Survey

1. altruism
2. love, friendship, personal closeness
3. education, intelligence, wisdom
4. fulfillment, intellectual and vocational achievement
5. education, intelligence, wisdom
These were the results to the value survey I took; I think they hit the nail on the head. I do believe that each and every person should be treated equally and fairly. I do look to have close and meaningful relationships with my friends and family, also to be able to trust one another with anything and everything. Education, intelligence, and wisdom are values I find very important; I want to continue to learn as much as I can and graduate at the top of my class. And for number four, my answers were also very true because I look for a future that I'll enjoy. I want to be happy with the career that I have and the life that I live and to be able to do what I want.

I found that these answers were very true and I found it weird how accurate they were. In looking at the answers I saw that what I want most is to be happy with my future, relationships, my academic careers, and to have everyone be treated equally.

Do I have to grow up?

Is it weird that I find it overwhelming to be a sophomore in high school, and already have to plan out your life during and after college? Because that's how I feel; when I was younger I thought I knew what would happen and that everything would fall into place and work out. I thought that I wouldn't face any ordeal or crucible that would distract me from my goals. When I was 5 I knew I wanted to be an artist. It was a dream I still have but one that I probably won't reach, in the sense that I won't major in it and go to art school.

Class recommendations, PSATs, SATs, it all makes me think about my future and how mind-boggling it is to decide a major, find a college, and plan a career path. I wish I could be like Peter Pan and not grow up sometimes, as silly as it seems. My email is spammed with a plethora of emails from colleges/universities due to me checking the Student Search Service box on my PSAT. I had to create a new email folder dedicated to "College Spam". It's nice to know that my acheivements thus far have caused schools to consider me as a student, even being a sophomore, but it makes me think how little time I have to do just that, THINK. (But I was excited to see Columbia in NY send me an email, since they're one of my top choices. I almost fell out of my chair.) To think about what I want to do for my future. Being an artist or a fashion designer really depend on who you meet and know, more practical intelligence than anything. Astrophysics, although it does take 13 years to earn a Ph.D, it will land me a job and stability, and it's something I take a deep interest in.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I wish I didn't have to think about my future so early into my life, that I didn't have to worry about college and majors and degrees and jobs. I miss the days where all I had to worry about was whether or not I had fruit snacks in my lunchbox and a pink crayon to color stuff with.

My Cultural Legacy: UPDATED

In reading chapter seven, I learned that cultural legacy helps influence the way you communicate and also helps define your habits. I think that my cultural legacy would be my act of letting my family know everything that is going on; my family communicates well with each other and we always talk about what's going on in our daily lives. I also think that being hard-working and putting others first is apart of my cultural legacy. Though I may not know much about my Puerto Rican heritage I can say, that from seeing how my immediate family is and what they've done to achieve the life they have now, that this is my culutral legacy.

The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes

In chapter seven of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses something which I never thought about, or even considered a possibility in plane crashes. In "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes", Gladwell suggests and further explains through statistics and transcripts that one's cultural legacy can effect communication and errors that arise from lack of understanding between others. He discusses mitigated speech, where a person leaves out certain words in a statement when they are adressing someone of superiority, so as not to insult someone, or to "sugarcoat" something.  We learn about Avianca flight o52 and how the Pilot and CoPilot's use of mitigated speech, and how their cultural legacy affected their communication, lead to the unfortunate crash of the plane; and this was not the only case in which this happened. He says that " who we are cannot be separated from where we're from- and when we ignore that fact, planes crash"; in this quote he is saying that one's cultural legacy helps define them and that misunderstandings between those of other cultural legacies can lead to conflicts.

I learned that cultural legacies are difficult barriers to break, that one's customs can be entirely different from another's, but undertanding them is key in communication.

Outliers Chapter 6: Cultural Legacy

In chapter six of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell shifts the story into another direction; while the first half focused on practical intelligence and how being in the right place at the right time affected one's success, part two opens up with a chapter detailing a family feud, and a plethora of more. But what Gladwell noticed and further elaborates on is that this feud, between the Turners and the Howards, was the apparent beginning of a pattern. Through studies conducted, scientists realized that the cause of the pattern of feuds and violence all along the Appalachians in the nineteenth century was attributed to a "culture of honor"; their's being that due to the fact that many in the area were herdsmen, they had to be ready to fight in response to even the slightest challenge to their reputation. The chapter further details how this culture of honor still holds true to the descendants of the area despite where they live and what they do; that a cultural legacy persists generation after generation.

A cultural legacy is the idea that where you come from, more so where your ancestors lived and how they grew up, matters and that it effects how you are as a person.

I'm not quite sure what my cultural legacy would be; I don't know much about my ancestors, aside from the fact that basically all my family lives/d in Puerto Rico, so I can't say much because I don't know my whole lineage.

My name's Tiffany and this blog is for Gifted Talented Seminar 1~
I'm a sophomore, just moved here from Alaska(: I like music a lot, music most people wouldn't think I'd like: hardcore. I love to draw and have been drawing for years, I love science and random discussions on scientific theories. And shopping, I really love shopping.